


Walls

by Nacre_Voit



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Sex, Angry Sex, Angst, Car Sex, Drinking, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Fed up mum friend Spencer, I'm making this sound way darker than it is, Longing, Love, M/M, Mentioned past child abuse/neglect, Mild Pain Kink, Nostalgia, Not an eating disorder fic but a bit of unhealthy eating behaviour that could be triggering, Oral Sex, Pegging - with Z in one chapter, Reminiscing, Road Trip, Rough Sex, Sweet angel Jon, The Rose Vest is like its own character, Underage warning is to be safe they're almost 30 in the present day of this, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unsafe Sex, long fic, motel sex, reconnecting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:14:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22738612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nacre_Voit/pseuds/Nacre_Voit
Summary: It’s not weird that Brendon’s still stronger than him, or even that Brendon still wants it. Ryan had always known what Brendon wanted, from the first time they met. Brendon’s large, dark eyes had skated over Ryan’s thighs and lingered nervously on his face when Ryan said hi, his pupils dilated as he held out his hand to shake.What’s weird is that it still turns Ryan on like he’s seventeen and starved for affection all over again.Ryan starts appearing at Brendon's place unannounced years after the split. Ryan can't explain why he keeps coming over. Brendon can't explain why he keeps letting him.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz, Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie, Ryan Ross/Pete Wentz, Sarah Orzechowski/Brendon Urie, Spencer Smith/Jon Walker, Z Berg/Ryan Ross
Comments: 36
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tinylittletext](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinylittletext/gifts).



> The Ryden closure fic I've always wanted to write. Late Valentine's day present for tinylittletext, thank you so much for inspiring me to really have a crack at this. 
> 
> All fiction, any real timelines and events are used very selectively and loosely based on what suited me. Pay any attention to what cities people actually live in? No. Written pre Brendon coming out as pan. No disrespect to any of the partners, spouses and children whose presence I've rearranged or ignored, I'm sure they're all lovely they just didn't fit into my dramatic Ryden story arc plans. 
> 
> Fic title taken from the Louis Tomlinson song.

_Time cast a spell on you, but you won’t forget me_

_I know I could have loved you but you would not let me_

\- ‘Silver Springs’, Fleetwood Mac

It’s a couple of things that get to Ryan.

The first one is Brendon unfollowing him on Twitter. It’s not like Ryan does anything great on Twitter, and it’s not like he’s trying to communicate with Brendon like that, at all, anymore. But there’s something about it that rubs him the wrong way, still under his skin a long time after he notices it, like the raw pink of a rash.

The second thing is that interview with Brendon where he talks about his sexuality. Ryan doesn’t see it for a long time after it comes out. He only finds it because he finally manages to grab that coffee with Jon that he’s been promising to grab for months, and while they’re catching up Jon points him in its direction. 

“Why do you mention it?” Ryan asks, and Jon shrugs and sips his espresso.

“Thought you might find it interesting.”

Now Ryan is sitting on his bed with his laptop, looking intently at the words in front of him.

_‘But I have, in the past, experimented in other realms of homosexuality and bisexuality.’_

‘ _Experimented_ ’, Ryan thinks, blinking away a memory of him and Brendon, naked and panting on a hotel bed with their cocks flushed and pressed against each other’s stomachs. _Huh._

*

Ryan doesn’t realise he’s made a conscious decision to go and see Brendon until he’s calling Spencer to ask for his address.

“You know that you haven’t called me for a year, right?” Spencer says, sounding tired and exasperated. “And this is what you call for? Don’t do this again, Ryan.”

“Do what?” Ryan asks, and Spencer lets out a frustrated sigh.

“Just don’t go too heavy on him, okay? He split up with his wife a few months ago.”

“Heavy,” Ryan repeats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“ _Ryan_.”

“ _Spencer_.”

Sometimes it feels like thirty years have passed since Spencer was the closest friend that he had. Sometimes it feels like no time at all.

*

“Ryan!” Brendon says, his eyebrows shooting up when he opens the door. He looks surprised and uncomfortable, but not exactly unwelcoming. Ryan had thought Spencer would probably warn him, but apparently not. 

Ryan shrugs. Appearing on Brendon’s doorstep uninvited had seemed like a good idea at the time several hours ago, and Ryan’s not amazing at altering his plans. He doesn’t want to leave.

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah, of course!” Brendon says, shaking his head slightly, like he’s trying to shake an image or a sensation that’s distracting him. Ryan remembers him doing that a lot. Brendon was always easily distracted.

“Can I get you tea or coffee or something?” Brendon asks, jamming his fingers into the pockets of his tight jeans as Ryan steps inside.

“Coffee,” Ryan says. “Would be great,” he adds falteringly, remembering that he’s a guest in a strange house. Even after all this time, he’s still so used to just telling Brendon what to do that the words feel strange coming out of his mouth.

“Coffee, cool, alright,” Brendon nods quickly and disappears. Ryan shrugs his jacket off and puts it on the hallstand, looking at a framed picture beside him on the wall. It’s a photo of Sarah. Ryan’s seen photos of her online, but he’s never actually met her. He’s seen their wedding pictures in a Google image search as well, because he wasn’t invited to the wedding. _Obviously you weren’t invited to the wedding_ , he tells himself as he stares at the photo. _God, Ryan, don’t take it so personally._

Sarah looks thin in the picture, as thin as Ryan used to be, and she’s wearing too much eyeliner, just like he used to with Panic!. Ryan chews his lip resentfully as he mentally adds the exclamation mark. He doesn’t know why they had to put it back. He reminds himself that Sarah must have liked her eyeliner, just like he always had. Ryan always has to make himself remember that being judgmental isn’t as attractive as people thought it was when he was eighteen, pretty, and famous. No one’s heart is going to flutter over a scathing comment or an unimpressed look from a has-been with a week’s worth of stubble.

He’s obviously still making Brendon nervous though. Brendon comes back into the entranceway holding two cups of coffee and edges in a sort of half-circle around Ryan to get his attention instead of just passing him one. Ryan follows him into the kitchen, giving the picture one last glance.

 _Blue eyes though_ , he thinks, absently rubbing his fingers over his eyelid.

“How are you?” Brendon asks as he pulls out a seat for Ryan at the kitchen table. He doesn’t ask why he’s appeared here unannounced when they haven’t spoken in almost two years. Brendon’s always been too sweet to ask things like that.

“I’m good,” Ryan says. “Not a coke addict or whatever it was they were writing about me.”

“That’s good,” Brendon laughs nervously. “Not being a coke addict is always good.”

“I read that interview,” Ryan says abruptly, and Brendon swallows his mouthful of coffee too fast. He doesn’t ask Ryan what interview he’s talking about.

“You read that,” he says, staring at the table as a faint blush colours his cheeks.

“Uh-huh,” Ryan says, twisting his cup around on the table as he watches Brendon squirm.

“Yeah, well, I thought it was a good time to talk about that,” Brendon says. “We had some songs about sexuality on that album, so-”

“ _That_ ,” Ryan repeats, cutting him off. “Was ‘that’ about me?”

“ _Ryan_ ,” Brendon says. There’s an almost pleading rasp to his voice. Ryan ignores it.

“It just came off as kinda catty, you know,” Ryan says, “calling it ‘experimenting’ all these years later and talking about how you’re straight, really. If you wanted to have a go at me, you could’ve just called.”

Brendon turns white and his mouth falls open.

“ _What_?” he says.

“Do you want me to repeat that?” Ryan asks. “God, you’re always so _slow_ , Brendon.”

Brendon’s mouth snaps shut.

“Right,” he says, and Ryan can hear the growing anger in his voice as he runs his fingers through his hair. It looks messy, like it used to when he slept in too late, and Ryan suddenly wants to run his hands through it. “Is there anything else you came here to accuse me of?”

Ryan shrugs.

“I just wanted to talk about it.”

Brendon laughs incredulously.

“Oh right, you wanted to insult me in a fucking blasé fashion. That’s so fucking nostalgic, Ryan, God.”

“No,” Ryan says slowly, annoyed that Brendon doesn’t get it, “I wanted to tell you how I felt. Like I told you, if you were feeling bitter about it you could’ve called me.”

Brendon laughs again, and this time there’s a hysterical edge to it.

“What if I don’t care about how you feel anymore?”

Ryan lowers his eyelashes, running his fingers over the lettering on his wrist as he looks up slowly from under them.

“Don’t you?”

Brendon’s eyes darken.

“Why did you come here? Like, are you gonna tell me, or are you just gonna mock me when I can’t figure it out?”

Ryan drums his fingers on the table.

“I told you what I wanted.”

“To talk about it,” Brendon repeats. “Right, so talk.”

“Brendon-” Ryan says frustratedly, and Brendon’s voice gets louder.

“No really, I would love to hear this. _Love_ to. Tell me the part about how you were always so available for calling again. Because you were so fucking _around_ to talk when you wouldn’t answer your phone when I tried to call you for _four months_ after you left.”

“ _Brendon_ ,” Ryan tries again, louder, because this conversation isn’t going the way he wanted it at all, though he doesn’t really know what way he wanted it to go in the first place.

“No wait, the part about how calling it ‘experimenting’ was some kind of attempt to get at you was even better! It’s not like you climbed onto my dick every time no one better was around, telling me it was going to be fine, and then snapped at me for touching your fucking wrist in public because it was ‘only an experiment’ and I was ‘being fucking weird about it’ or anything!”

“Brendon!” Ryan slams his palm down on the table and Brendon stops. His breathing is heavy as he looks up at Ryan. Ryan is shocked, and it must show in his eyes, because Brendon’s face softens, like it always did so easily in the past, whenever Ryan was upset.

Brendon looks down at his lap and holds out his hand palm-up on the table, his fingers extended towards Ryan. Ryan isn’t sure if he actually knows he’s doing it. He slowly extends his hand and places it in Brendon’s. The old gesture sends a strange sensation up Ryan’s spine as Brendon softly twines their fingers together.

“I’m sorry, I never wanted to dredge that up again,” Brendon says. “I just…come on, Ryan.” Brendon’s voice is hoarse as he finally looks at Ryan through those thick, dark eyelashes. “You told me you were straight so many times.”

Ryan knocks his coffee over on the table as he grabs Brendon’s jaw and kisses him hard.

He feels Brendon’s breath almost stop in his throat and then he’s kissing him back, moaning into his lips as he wraps his fingers around Ryan’s neck and presses his other hand into Ryan’s shoulder blades, pushing him closer. Too-hot coffee spills over their arms as Brendon almost drags Ryan into his lap in the chair. Ryan shudders at the hot pain and Brendon hisses and grips Ryan’s thighs, pushing up from his chair and lifting him away as their chests collide.

Ryan wraps his arms around Brendon’s shoulders and his legs around his waist as he feels Brendon’s tongue in his mouth for the first time in almost six years. He lets his teeth press down on it a little, and Brendon’s lips press harder against his, soft and full and wide open, like nothing’s ever changed at all. Brendon’s fingers drag up his thighs and dig into his ass through his jeans. He puts Ryan on the kitchen bench, pulling Ryan’s t-shirt off as they break apart breathlessly and pinning his wrists down on the bench. Ryan arches into his grip, wondering how it’s _still_ like this.

It’s not weird that Brendon’s still stronger than him, or even that Brendon still wants it. Ryan had always known what Brendon wanted, from the first time they met. Brendon’s large, dark eyes had skated over Ryan’s thighs and lingered nervously on his face when Ryan said hi, his pupils dilated as he held out his hand to shake. He always got distracted when Ryan stood too close to him at practice, and he slowly started missing church to hang out with him. It was kind of cruelly amusing for Ryan at first, then annoying, then intriguing, then frustrating, and then he was in Brendon’s bunk, with Brendon wide-eyed and slick inside him, biting his lip as he rode Brendon’s cock and warned him that they needed to be quiet.

What’s weird is that it still turns Ryan on like he’s seventeen and starved for affection all over again. His toes are curling as Brendon bites down on his lower lip, and the desire pooling low in his stomach is so strong it’s making him feel physically sick. He feels Brendon’s erection press against him through their jeans and bites back a moan, and Brendon pulls away, his lips parted and his tongue swiping over his mouth. Brendon’s eyelashes flutter, and he leans in again, but then his eyes fly open and he shoves Ryan away, his eyes dark and shocked and churning like Ryan’s stomach.

“No.”

“Ow, Brendon, fuck!” Ryan says, pushing himself up on his arms as his spine smarts from where it’s just hit the bench.

“ _No_ ,” Brendon says again, his voice stronger now and full of anger.

“No what,” Ryan snaps, “no kissing on the mouth? No fucking on the bench? There’s no more coffee?” Ryan glares at Brendon, rubbing his spine. “No homo? Come on, spit it out, Brendon, don’t leave me hanging here.”

“No you don’t just walk in here and use me for whatever the fuck it is you want to prove now!”

“I just did,” Ryan mutters, and Brendon looks at him like a wounded animal.

“Was it worth it? The drive here? Getting to smirk at how dumb I still am?”

“I didn’t drive for fucking four hours to fight with you,” Ryan spits, and Brendon laughs, his eyes wild and so beautiful that Ryan wants to slap him.

“No, you drove here to fuck with me. Like you’ve always done, whenever you fucking felt like it. Dumb, wide-eyed, innocent Brendon, am I right? He’ll let you use him and never complain and never tell anyone about it. He doesn’t fucking know any better.”

“They knew!” Ryan yells, trying to tell himself that now is an alright time to be yelling, because he suddenly doesn’t feel even close to being able to stop. “Spencer, Jon, Pete, they all knew!”

“Yeah,” Brendon says, “everyone knew. And I didn’t find out that _anyone_ did until you fucking left and I got drunk with Spencer and he _told_ me. Do you know how fucking shitty that felt?”

“Uh-huh, I’m the worst thing that ever happened to you, I got that already,” Ryan snaps, and Brendon looks into his eyes.

“No. You leaving like that was the worst thing that ever happened.”

Ryan swallows and shuts up. He doesn’t have anything to say to that.

“God, you won’t even look at me now,” Brendon says as Ryan looks down at the floor. “Why did you come here?”

Ryan fumbles for an answer.

“I heard you broke up with your wife.”

 _Wrong answer_ , he thinks as he looks up and sees Brendon get even paler.

“Wow, that’s so lovely of you,” Brendon spits. “And did you want to offer some bullshit false sympathy while you stood there feeling fucking smug about how it didn’t work out, or did you just want to try to _fuck_ me while the rejection was still hot? You always did like it most after you pushed me away.”

Ryan’s heartbeat is speeding up like it always does when he loses control of a situation. He tries to open his mouth and feels like he’s choking.

“Fucking nothing to do with you, by the way,” Brendon tells him, and Ryan flinches as he watches pain light up Brendon’s dark eyes. “She left because she fell in love with another woman and I told her to go for it. Your name never came up.” Brendon’s voice gets quieter and his fingers slowly clench into a fist and then unclench again, stretching and empty. “I figured if you love someone let them go, huh. I’m getting good at that.”

Ryan feels like Brendon’s punched him in the stomach. Ryan doesn’t like being told that he’s loved, was loved, and it’s not like Brendon doesn’t fucking understand why. Ryan’s never had wonderful experiences with people who’ve told him that they loved him. He’s had his father’s fists landing on his skin and his mother leaving him behind, and all his girlfriends fucking someone else or just walking out, because they were tired of him ‘never opening up’. It was always easier to let Brendon open him up with his cock than it was to listen to the things that he whispered afterwards, when he thought Ryan was asleep.

Ryan looks up at Brendon and does what he’s always done when he’s lost something; he lashes out with anything he’s got left.

“My name never came up? Not even when you fucked her?”

Brendon’s silent for a long moment and then his voice comes out in a croaky whisper.

“Did that feel good?” he asks.

“No,” Ryan says, swallowing the lump that’s throbbing in his throat.

“ _Good_. Now fucking get out.”

Ryan slams the door behind him. He hopes the picture frame falls off the fucking wall.

*

Ryan can’t stop pacing when he gets home. After hours his body’s still flushed and ready for sex, and he resents that almost as much as the angry tears he had to bite back for ten minutes in the car. He finally pauses and drags out the cardboard box at the back of his cupboard that’s full of all his favourite old Panic! things that he pretends not to have anymore. He digs around in it until he finds the rose vest. It’s crumpled, but the roses are still soft in his hands.

He puts it on and runs his hands over the fabric. He remembers Brendon walking over to him on a hot stage in front of ten thousand people and leaning in, so close to his face that Ryan’s pulse always jumped. Ryan’s fingers slide over his abdomen as he thinks about the sweat glittering on Brendon’s neck and his wet lips shining under those lights, his breath shivering over Ryan’s lips as he sung Ryan’s lyrics back to him. Ryan bites his lip and undoes his belt.

It’s guilty and bittersweet and _good_ when he falls back on his bed, his fingers wrapping around his cock as he quickly drags his jeans down, the fabric bunching around his knees. Thinking about shit with Brendon will bring him off when other things won’t, but Ryan almost never does it, because the comedown isn't amazing. He’s already steeling himself for it while he strokes his cock, picturing Brendon eight years ago, moaning underneath him, his cock flushed and jumping as Ryan licked his lips and moved down his body. He remembers Brendon’s ‘ _Please_ ’ coming out in a whisper when the fabric roses rubbed over his abdomen, and smelling his own sweat already clinging to them from the show.

It was late at night after they’d finished playing a huge show when he’d gone down on Brendon wearing his rose vest. He’d snarled at Brendon about something about a week ago, and Brendon was avoiding him. Ryan crept into his bunk already hard when Jon and Spencer were out drinking with their crew, his cock pressed against his stomach over the pretty red fabric. Brendon’s resolve had snapped after a few minutes of Ryan arching and pawing, flushing at the fact that he needed to coax and plead to get Brendon’s affection again.

Ryan comes thinking about Brendon slowly pushing inside him, shivering at the memory of Brendon’s thumb rubbing into his spine as he filled him up for the first time in a month. He lies with his arm over his face and feels awful for fifteen minutes and then gets up and looks in the mirror.

The amount of stubble on his face makes the rose vest look all wrong, so he takes it off and then spends another fifteen minutes trying to shave with his blunt disposable in his pretty filthy bathroom mirror. He nicks the side of his face and his blood pushes onto his cheek and shimmers before it slides down his chin. Ryan blinks at it in the mirror. He feels physically numb now, after his orgasm, after _Brendon_ , and it doesn’t hurt. It looks almost pretty.

When he puts the vest on and looks in the mirror again he still looks stupid. He tries to flatten his swept up hair and tilts his head, but all of a sudden nothing about him looks good enough. The fine lines on his forehead are deeper than they were when he played with Panic!, and the angles on his face look less defined. He thinks about Brendon’s fingers digging into his hip bones when he fucked him in his bunk and bites his lip, pressing his fingers into his face under the line of his chin until it looks firmer: prettier, in his eyes. He wonders if Brendon would’ve pushed his thighs back and fucked him on his kitchen bench if he’d looked more like the conflicted teenager he must have pushed inside a hundred times.

Ryan tries to clear his head and straightens his shoulders in the mirror. He’s still skinny, but the rose vest is pulling across his chest, a little too narrow for his softer frame. Ryan remembers Brendon closing the door behind them, wrapping his arms around his waif-like frame almost ten years ago, burying his face in the fabric roses on Ryan’s shoulder and inhaling, undoing his belt before Ryan could push him away, letting him know that it was about _sex_ : that it was _okay_. Ryan glares at his reflection and shrugs the roses off his body, laying the vest out carefully on his bed. He glances at the cardboard box full of half-eaten pizza on his nightstand and then tosses it in the trash.

Ryan falls asleep hungry, rubbing his fingers over his stomach and wanting Brendon inside him.

*

When Ryan’s eyes open he’s laid out half-dressed across his bed and his stomach is cramping. The smell of slightly-off pepperoni from the abandoned pizza in the garbage is appealing at this point, and Ryan stumbles over to his dresser and opens the first drawer, digging under his clothes until he finds his last zip-lock bag of coke. He lies down again for a while after he’s snorted it, looking down at his bare stomach as his eyelashes flutter. It already looks flatter, his abdomen streaked with pink from the sunset washing over him from his window. He fingers his stomach and grunts back at Captain Knots when the cat cries for attention.

He shudders a little as the blow slides down the back of his sinuses. It’s been a week since he’s done some, and it feels stronger than it did last week, shivering over his body until his fingertips tingle. Captain Knots jumps onto the bed and rubs his tiny damp nose into his fingers until Ryan flexes them and strokes him behind the ear. When the cat gets bored he plods down to Ryan’s stomach and puts his paws on it. He attempts to knead it for about three seconds and then stops and gives Ryan a cross look, as if to tell him it’s too small.

Ryan narrows his eyes at him.

“Rude,” he says, and the cat gives him a plaintive meow and jumps off the bed.

Ryan looks down at his stomach one last time and thinks about Brendon pulling out, flushed and breathless with Ryan’s legs on his shoulders, and coming all over it. He sighs and follows Captain Knots into the kitchen to pour him some food. The blow’s set in quick, and he doesn’t feel like he needs to eat now, but he feels like he needs something else, in spite of it. When he’s fed Captain Knots he picks up his phone and scrolls down until he finds Z’s number. He slides his fingers inside the back of his jeans almost unconsciously, biting his lip and feeling his high settle into his bones while he listens to her phone ringing.

“Hey loser,” Z answers affectionately, and Ryan pictures her sticking her tongue into her cheek and exhales.

“Z, do you wanna come over and fuck me up the ass? Because I’m pretty sure I remember you getting wasted and telling me you wanted to fuck me up the ass at your birthday party last year.”

“Is that a trick question?”

“…How would that be a trick question?”

“Because everyone’s wanted to fuck you up the ass at some point.”

Ryan groans and rubs his hand over his forehead.

“I’m only letting that slide because I literally want you to fuck me up the ass right now.”

Z is quiet for a second.

“Is this about Brendon?”

“No,” Ryan lies badly.

“‘No’ as in you’re lying to me or ‘no’ as in you won’t answer the question?” Z _sounds_ like she’s raising her eyebrows.

“Either. Bring stuff,” he adds, because he has no idea where his vibrator is, to the point where he’s resigned to the fact that it’s probably going to reappear at an awkward time. He’d given in and picked it up a month after he stopped answering Brendon’s calls, his hands trembling at the store from the desperate, strangling want for someone he’d promised himself not to fall open for again.

Ryan used to push the thick, red vibrator deep inside him, his knees pulled back with his arm wrapped around them, aching around it, not understanding how it could be so much _larger_ and so much _less_ than Brendon at the same time. He was always uncomfortably full, pulsating inside, stretched pink the one time he craned his neck to look in the mirror, teeth almost chattering as he flicked the vibrations up, trying to make up for Brendon’s absence. He also used to curl up on his bed afterwards and play Brendon’s pleading voicemails until he managed to fall asleep, wrapping that amazing, emotion-soaked voice around him like Brendon used to wrap his arm around him in his sleep, unconsciously pressing into Ryan’s spine and mumbling whispery half-formed words into his neck.

He pretends it’s nothing like that when Z pulls his clothes off: pretends that he’s not forcing down memories of lying on Brendon’s single mattress on the floor of his shitty apartment while her fingers stroke up his ribs. He has the presence of mind to make a joke about the pink strap-on she pulls out of her handbag being emasculating, she calls him a misogynist, and he leans his lips down to her ear and mumbles something lame like ‘Put me in my place then’. Z rolls her eyes, but she puts his fingers inside her dress, her pretty lace dress that she’s bothered to put on, her pussy wet from thinking about putting something inside him.

Ryan appreciates that desire on some basic level, his fingers pressing into her instinctively, but he’s still an inch from a memory of Brendon’s eyes lighting up when he opened his front door and found Ryan on his doorstep, letting Ryan in, offering him his food when he had almost none, putting on Aladdin and sitting beside him overflowing with energy, trying his best not to be too noisy, because he was beginning to understand the signs that Ryan didn’t want to deal with another person’s noise. Ryan wonders why he’s thinking about it when Z settles between his thighs, because Brendon didn’t fuck him that night, or any night in that apartment, except for once, the first time.

“It alright like this?” Z asks breathlessly when she’s been curling two fingers inside him for a while, and Ryan has the presence of mind to sort of wonder, if it is alright, really, what’s going on with him, but the urge to have someone push inside him is stronger.

“It’s alright.” He pulls on her wrist until her fingers slowly slip out and then rolls onto his front and arches his back. “Do it like this.”

Z leans low and fumbles around for a minute, her breasts low on his shoulders and the rubbery head of the dildo pushing uselessly into his skin.  
  
“It’s-” Z’s voice is breathy and flustered. “It’s a nice view but it won’t work. Amazed you ever got anything in here.”

“I never said I did.” He can practically feel Z rolling her eyes, and then she lets out a sort of nervous giggle, collapsing into his back a little. Ryan can feel his body unwinding with hers, the pressure of the dildo rubbing on his slicked skin feeling sweeter. He feels the awareness in Z’s body as she feels the muscle give almost imperceptibly too, her nipples hardening where they’re pressed into his back. “Push,” he urges softly, and she straightens up and puts her delicate fingers on his hips, nudging the head of the dildo into him.

“I bet you love thinking about what I’ve put in here.” Ryan arches, screwing his hips down on the first inch. “What’s it like watching?”

Z thrusts softly.

“Real pretty,” she drawls, and then, in her normal voice, “Is this what it felt like with him?”

Ryan rolls his eyes and stretches his arm behind him, guiding her inside at a better angle.

“Like that?” Z asks, rubbing more lube in a circle around his rim where the toy’s pushing inside him, sliding her thumb up and down the skin between where he’s being pushed open and his balls. Ryan’s cock pulses at the sweet line of pressure under her thumb. He pushes back onto the dildo but Z pulls out a little. “Like that?”

“What, _now?_ Z, _really?_ ”

“A favour,” Z says softly. “I’ve done plenty for you.”

Ryan flushes and huffs out a sigh.

“It’s not like that.”

Z nudges what she pulled out back inside.

“Not like…?”  
  
“What that felt like.”  
  
“What was it like?”  
  
“Like not playing twenty questions with a dildo in my ass?”  
  
Z pulls out and rubs the head of the dildo on his hole, making him blush and shudder at the audible pop and the tingling pressure.

“Like skin,” Ryan sighs. “I’d ride him.”

“Good,” Z’s voice is soothing and full of lust all at once as she spreads him open and pushes into him, thrusting softly into his prostate.

“You’re pretty messed up,” Ryan murmurs, pushing back into the pressure and closing his eyes. Z leans in and grins into his skin and then licks his shoulder.

“I’m pretty. What else did you do with him?”

“On my back.” Ryan gasps as she realigns and thrusts harder. “My legs on his shoulders. His waist.”

“More for more,” Z teases, guiding another two inches of the dildo deep inside his body to make the new rules of her game pretty obvious. Ryan’s lips part at that perfect, too-much feeling of fullness he’s been dying for all night, his face and his neck pink from the understanding that he won’t stop now, not like this.

“Up against the wall. With him holding me. On his cock. Like that.” Ryan’s sentences come out in little pieces, awkward because of Z’s thrusts into his body, and because of a flushed, itching shyness that he doesn’t understand. Something that lingers sometimes, from the way that Brendon used to look at him.

“Where?” Z breathes.  
  
“Anywhere I’d like,” Ryan says, guilt and lust mixing on his tongue as her dildo pushes neatly into his prostate on every thrust. “That’s what you’d like to hear right? That’s true,” he adds as Z starts pumping into him for real. “He’d do what I liked wherever I found him. Handjobs in hotels when I crawled into his bed at night. Licking my cum off his fingers so no one would find out. Me swallowing his. Him pumping it into my mouth with those pretty eyes all wide while I put my lips around just the head. Is that enough? Please just make me come.” Z reaches around and starts tugging at his cock, her thumb pushing into the underside. Ryan moans.

“God, your throat is bright pink but you’re _dripping_ ,” Z half moans and half laughs. Ryan can feel her fingers under the fabric of the strap on, playing with the lips of her pussy as she bottoms out. “More.”

Ryan feels glutted with pleasure, pleasure leaking from his cock and the tight cluster of muscles inside him and pleasure from dredging up those guilty-pretty images of Brendon, pumping inside him and looking at him with sweat dripping down his forehead, gasping “Is that what you want? Is it good like that?”

“In the corridors backstage, with my face pressed against the wall. His cock pressed into my ass. Talking into my neck while his cum ran down my thighs. With his skin slapping on my ass in the shower. He used to look at my ass, like that, and uh-” Ryan whines as Z grinds into his prostate spot on and pulls on his hair, his cock pulsing in her fingers, “tell me how pretty it looked. Swallowing up his cock. In the- ” Ryan’s voice stutters with his hips, pushing back into the dildo, blinking at the memories blurring into the pleasure behind his eyelids, “in the dressing room. Those soft lips all the way down my cock whenever I pushed his shoulders down. His eyes used to water. The makeup would smudge.”  
  
Z moans, her wrist pumping faster as she works his cock and gives him every last inch of the dildo.

“I’d go down on him. Let him pull my hair and fuck my mouth. The way he’d blush and throw back his head and _groan_ , I- _fuck_.” Ryan’s voice cracks and the pleasure lurches in his stomach. “He always looked so shocked. I’d tell him I hated the way he’d mess up my hair. But I loved that.”

Everything goes black behind Ryan’s eyelids as he comes in Z’s hand, except for a shivery image of Brendon’s eyes, looking down at him when he’d licked up the last drop of his cum, dark and amazed and shining with wet black eyeliner stuck on his lashes.

Ryan’s elbows buckle and he collapses onto his forearms, Z pushing the last pulses of his orgasm out of him.

“Pull out,” he rasps, wincing at the sticky sound when Z does. He turns around and lets his fingers play idly along his ribs for a moment, peripherally aware of Z unbuckling her strap-on and laying down naked beside him. “Well that was degrading,” he says conversationally. The soft skin of Z’s skinny arm rubs into his.

“It’s not like…like that’s the first time you’ve fucked me thinking about him, really.” Z’s voice is soft, and there’s not any resentment in it. The sentence comes out more like a sigh. Ryan turns his head to look at her and she looks away from the ceiling and looks at him too, brown eyes as pretty and frank as ever.

Z looks at his eyes for a moment and then looks at his lips and tugs on his wrist.

“Finish me?” she asks, pressing his fingers into her abdomen.

“What,” Ryan says dryly, “you mean you didn’t get off just from humiliating me?”

Z shrugs.

“I was in love with you. Which one of us should really be embarrassed?”

Ryan’s taken aback for a moment, watching the corners of her eyes crinkle as her lips curl into a tired smile. She looks as pretty like that as she had years ago. Ryan’s chest feels heavy.

Ryan rubs his face into her throat apologetically, curling around her as he slides his hand between her thighs.

“I didn’t do this enough when we were together, did I?” he asks, stroking two fingers just inside her pussy.

“No, you didn’t.” Z sighs and pushes up into his fingers.

Ryan watches Z’s face while he fingers her and she looks like a fairytale, like she always does. He presses his lips into the corner of her mouth when she arches up and comes, hoping she understands that he wishes he could’ve been hers in that kind of story. Ryan lays his head on her chest and listens to her heartbeat.

“I really wanted you to be my person,” he tells her as her fingers play with his hair. “The roses, the firework colours reflecting in your eyes, the whole Baz Luhrmann star-crossed picture.”

Z presses her lips softly into his forehead.

“Let’s get these teen hearts beating faster, faster.” Her voice is whispery but perfect, fragile and fraught like Brendon’s used to be, flying above Ryan’s lyrics and leaving him in awe. It’s like that, but not the same.

Ryan huffs and blushes and hides his face against Z’s breast. Her fingers trace patterns on his shoulder, a castle, he thinks, and a rose with something trailing out of it like streamers.

“I understand,” she says, and after a while, “He probably looks great in a pair of angel wings.”

Ryan laughs into her chest and when it turns into gasping, panic sickly sweet and swelling in his lungs as he pictures Brendon looking through him like Z does, Z cradles his head and sings to him until it’s over. 

*


	2. Chapter 2

_Now I know that I can’t make you stay_

_But where’s your heart_

_-_ ‘Famous Last Words’, My Chemical Romance _  
  
_

Ryan spends the better part of a fortnight unpacking boxes, pulling out scarves and white ruffled shirts and swathes of damask fabric that he must have had plans for all those years ago. He’s sort of amazed by how much of this stuff he still has, though logically he knows he hasn’t thrown anything away. It’s like he’d expected all these things he’d packed away in airtight plastic and not looked at in empty rooms to crystallise, or dry up like a pressed flower, but now that he’s running the tips of his fingers over them he feels like his past-life didn’t desiccate at all. When he hasn’t avoided thinking about it altogether, that time in his life with Panic!, the circus of colours, the starry eyes, the lush, performative emotion of it, has felt so opalised to him, a pretty thing he could pick up and idly touch, but a fossil.

Ryan pulls at the fabric now, watching it unfurl over the skin of his forearms, and the veins under the diaphanous waves of colour feel like something is blooming out of them, restless and painful and amazing. He wonders if it’s the just the heap of coke he scored off a fan he was talking to on Twitter, tugging aside her underwear and lapping at her until she came after they’d finished snorting a couple of lines off a framed mirror he’d unpacked from a box around dawn that day. Ryan has it propped against the wall now, watching the sunset from the window illuminating the chipped pearlescent paint on the shells in its frame. He runs his nails over a pink shell as Captain Knots winds around his ankles, his head flashing over an image from the past, waves of sunset colour in the ocean as it lapped at Brendon’s pale shoulders.

“What do you think, pal?” he asks the cat, waving at the assortment of items he’s assembled on the floor between his spread ankles. Captain Knots looks at him and then bumps his little face into the box of an old makeup palette, knocking it onto its front and causing a cloud of musky smelling powder and glitter to puff into the air and then settle on the carpet. Ryan scrunches up his nose and sighs.

“You’ve got a point,” he says, picking up a plastic pot of rose gold glitter eyeshadow and rubbing his thumb into the dry, cakey mess it’s turned into. “Gonna have to go to the store for the face stuff. I like this colour though.” Ryan rubs a little rose gold dust into Captain Knots’ fur along his back, and then instantly worries about him licking it off. He picks the cat up and carries him into the kitchen to wipe it off with a damp paper towel, cooing softly at Captain Knots as the cat makes cross little sounds. “I was just making you pretty, little guy,” Ryan apologises, “but you’re already perfect.”

Ryan looks at himself in his bedroom mirror from his perch on his bed as he eats a bowl of Cheerios in lieu of dinner that night. He’s just run out of Lucky Charms, which is most of what he’s put into his body besides blow for the last week and a half. Ryan angles his shoulder forward and looks at the contrast between his pale grey t-shirt, his pink mouth and the dark hollow above his collarbone. His face is thinner already, his chin and his lips sticking out more as he tilts them up. Ryan is perfectly aware that with his metabolism he could probably land that pretty fast without the influx of blow and lack of non-rainbow-coloured foods, but doing so much has felt sweet, like the gooey marshmallows in the Lucky Charms that he’s had probably once a day when he feels a little dizzy. The feeling of them on his tongue is this sugar rush of nostalgia that he hadn’t expected when he absent-mindedly picked them up at the store. 

Ryan puts his bowl on the nightstand and pulls the grey tee up over his abdomen. He arches his hips up, looking at his almost flat stomach in the mirror and thinking about Brendon eating Lucky Charms on their tour bus in the morning. Brendon used to lean against the bench, holding his bowl in front of his chest and spooning the little stars into his mouth while Ryan watched him in his peripheral vision. Ryan pretended not to look at the pale skin above the cord of Brendon’s pyjamas, the way the smooth white of his hip seemed to flicker as the sun rose outside the window Brendon liked to face, like watercolour paint spilling over the bone and then washing clean.

“Why don’t you just eat it at the table like a normal person?” Ryan had asked once, and Brendon had looked up and licked the sugar off his lips, rubbing his thumb absently over the grey fabric of the t-shirt he’d slept in and nodding at the question.

“Pretty view I guess.” 

Ryan had glanced at the high narrow window of the bus and frowned.

“We aren’t always parked facing the sun?”

Brendon had blushed and laughed softly.

“Sure Ryan, that’s what I was talking about.”

“You’re so lame,” Ryan had said, rolling his eyes away from Brendon and his awkward, stubborn flirting in the soft pink and gold light. That night he let Brendon fuck him face to face, the way that he knew Brendon liked, let Brendon press his face into the column of his throat and inhale as Ryan’s knees rubbed into his ribs. And in the morning, after Brendon stumbled frantically out of his bunk at the sound of Spencer arriving back from his crack-of-dawn coffee run, because he knew that Ryan hated it when anyone almost walked in on them, and left his grey t-shirt behind, Ryan had pushed his nose into the fabric and breathed in.

Ryan had put the shirt on a day later, liking the way that Brendon’s eyes went a little wide and awed when he looked at Ryan in something of his for the first time.

Ryan looks at the mirror now and sucks at the inside of his lip, tasting the sugar clinging to his tongue and thinking about how sweet Brendon had been that day. Brendon had announced loudly that he wanted soda instead of beer when they were hanging out outside Fall Out Boy’s bus. Pete had laughed, eyes glittering under the stars.

“Does he really need any more sugar, Ryan?”

Brendon had pushed his lower lip out almost imperceptibly at Pete’s teasing.

“I don’t need to drink either.” Brendon’s eyes had darted to Ryan, looking for approval, and Ryan had flushed and looked away from his lips.

Ryan pulls the fabric of Brendon’s old shirt between his teeth, letting it drag along his bottom lip and inhaling. He thinks about the way that Brendon smelled that night, light sweat from the humid air and spices in his deodorant and the strange fresh sweetness that Ryan was starting to look for when he sucked on Brendon’s skin. Ryan lies down and thinks about how solicitous Brendon was, rubbing his bare arm with both hands and asking if he was cold, because Ryan was getting goosebumps from the way that Brendon was looking at him, eyes bright and lips tugging at the corners as he unconsciously wet them into this soft pink, shining curve, looking at Ryan wearing his t-shirt.

Ryan lays one hand on his abdomen and one in his lap as he thinks about the way that Brendon swallowed around him that night, fingers curling inside Ryan and his other palm pressing into Ryan’s stomach. Ryan was hyperaware of the sweat on his throat and the way that he couldn’t stop gasping. Brendon made these obscene almost gurgling sounds as he tried to take all of Ryan, letting out frustrated whines around him and pushing his fingers harder into Ryan’s prostate after he gagged. Ryan looked down at Brendon’s face poised between his thighs, glitter eyeshadow running in rivers, shivered at the sweet pressure as Brendon sucked around the head and the soft gush of air as he breathed through his nose. Ryan’s stomach muscles fluttered then, and he knew Brendon felt it, because he pulled his lips off Ryan’s cock and looked up at him, pupils huge and sparkling.

“Maybe you _didn’t_ need more sugar,” Ryan had gasped out.

“Fuck you,” Brendon had laughed, but it was warm and blissed-out as he lay his head against Ryan’s thigh for a moment and panted. Brendon placed a damp kiss on Ryan’s inner thigh and then pushed himself up and did the same to Ryan’s abdomen, lips moving in an awed murmur across the skin. “I love the way you’re shaking.” 

Ryan stares at the ceiling now and wonders why the rose-tint of that memory never fades away, why all the things that should’ve been embarrassing or gross or lame twist and bloom in his guts in way that’s not like anything else he knows. His thighs still trembling for ages after he came. The taste of soda mixing with musk and salt when Brendon kissed him as they were starting to fall asleep, which Ryan found he didn’t really mind all that much as Brendon fisted his hand softly in the back of Ryan’s hair. The way that Brendon was humming something into the nape of his neck as Ryan lay in his arms that Ryan was pretty sure was a Britney Spears song. Ryan wonders why his cock is so full now, hurting under the zipper of his jeans until he has to pull it away so it doesn’t bruise.

Brendon had waited until Ryan pretended to be asleep that night, to push closer, put his chin over Ryan’s shoulder and sigh.

“I love it when you wear my stuff.” Brendon had whispered, and then more firmly, like he was practising something, “I love the way you look. I fucking love this.”

Ryan’s stomach flutters again, like it used to under Brendon’s palm, and Ryan closes his eyes, whispers alone in his walls.

“Brendon. _Brendon._ ” 

*

Ryan plays the VH1 Unplugged version of ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’ and sings along under his breath while he buzz cuts the back of his hair with a new electric razor. He’s pretty good with his hands without looking, could always get whatever profoundly stupid belt buckle Pete was wearing at the time undone with one hand, because Pete liked to play with his other wrist. Pete used to rub the thickest part of Ryan’s wrist between three fingers and his thumb, grinding the bones a little and then looking at Ryan’s eyes and smirking as he raised Ryan’s wrist to his mouth and sucked.

“You’ve got bones like matchsticks, Ryan Ross,” Pete would say as Ryan’s hand wrapped around him inside his briefs, lips wet and tongue flicking at the fresh pink bruise smeared across the underside of Ryan’s wrist.

“And sugar we’re goin’ down swinging,” Ryan mouths, looking at his face in the mirror and running his fingers through the wide V of his fresh undercut. A not-unpleasant shiver runs under his fingers, like it used to when Brendon pressed two fingers under his skull and rubbed patterns in the fine hair. He’s out of practice but he makes a pretty decent attempt at straightening his hair too, up to the point where he burns his fingers at the last moment trying to fix his fringe away from his eyes. Ryan curses and sucks at the burn, lashes fluttering at the pain, understanding that it’s a nasty habit, that the last thing he’ll want later is a bruise on top of peeling skin.

Ryan pulls on the tightest pair of grey jeans that turns up in a five minute excavation of his closet, puts the tip of his thumb in an old but usable pot of smoky glitter M.A.C eyeshadow and lets the air whistle out of his lips as he drags it across both eyelids. He looks at the person reflected in the glass, at light brown eyes and pink burnt fingers and lips that look oddly flushed and alive under the faint trace of pale grey glitter, and for reasons he can’t put a finger on, Ryan thinks about Reading Festival. The feverish bloom of pink that spread across Brendon’s cheek when Ryan sat him down and tentatively touched the darker bottle bruise around his eye. The way that he mumbled “It’s fine, it’s just ugly,” and then leaned up to Ryan’s face, whispered “I want to fuck you later.” How Ryan had paced in their hotel lobby until Spencer grabbed his arm, muttering “You’re making me dizzy, Ryan. And he’s alright.”

Ryan loved and hated the way that Brendon could control his breath as he poured out any lyric in a too-full line in front of thousands of people, but not after the sex that night as Ryan kissed his swollen eyelid, his still-hard cock, the startled beat under the flushed skin of his chest, murmured “Swollen” into Brendon’s throat.

Ryan thinks about waking up late that night to find Brendon sitting in a chair and looking out through the sheer layer of curtains covering the balcony. He had a sad look on his face that Ryan didn’t understand, and Ryan had walked over to him, put himself in Brendon’s frame of vision, naked and pale amidst the distant lights.

“It wasn’t anything about you. It’s not like it’s really our scene. And-”

Soft laughter had interrupted him and Brendon was shaking his head, looking up at him exhausted and unafraid, steady with his asymmetric gaze.

“If I’d known it would make you look at my _face_ when we fucked, I would’ve asked them to throw the bottles, Ryan.”

Ryan’s face had gone bright pink and he’d stiffly picked up his clothes and gone to sleep in Jon’s room. Brendon didn’t say anything to try to stop him from leaving, only looked out at the lights.

Ryan licks at the raw pink skin of his knuckles and looks at the rose colour rising on his cheeks in the grimy mirror as his head hopelessly replays that night and the morning after. Jon gently muscling past Ryan’s disgruntled protests as he climbed into Ryan’s bed, murmuring “Let me love you, you bony asshole, just stop elbowing me and accept my love” and “He’ll be back” as he wrapped Ryan up in his arms and started falling back asleep.

Waking up at 5 a.m. and opening Jon’s door to find Brendon asleep against it in the corridor, a tiny bit of drool on his face, looking up at Ryan with bleary eyes as he woke up and mumbling “I wasted it, I-” before Ryan pulled him up and into the room. Pushing Brendon softly until he braced on the tiles of the shower wall and eating him out until his whines were nasal and pleading. What Brendon felt like on the inside, sweet clingy heat as Ryan pushed his cock into him, which was something they hadn’t done for a long time. The way that Brendon clutched at his shoulders and wouldn’t let him pull out afterwards, though everything about the position he was in must have hurt.

Brendon had one leg bent at the knee and braced on the edge of the bath, his other foot ballet-bruised from where he was perched on his toes to allow for Ryan’s small height advantage. Brendon had looked so broken-fairytale beautiful, all of his face and frame shockingly pale compared to the matching pink of his softening cock and his puffy eye, and when he’d dug his nails into Ryan’s shoulder blades, saying “I’m sorry, I’m such a fucking-”, Ryan had said “I’ll look at your face.”

Ryan takes his fingers away from his lips now, an aggravated, gnawed pink mess, wipes his mouth, looks at himself one last time, and snatches up his car keys.

*

Ryan’s playing idly with three colour eyeliner pens in a drugstore cosmetics aisle and wanting a drink when he hears his name. 

“Ryan Ross.”

Ryan starts and looks up to find Pete Wentz of all people standing in middle of the aisle with his trademark rakish grin. Ryan shoots an exasperated look at the ceiling.

“Pete Wentz.”

Pete’s gratingly charming grin spreads all the way across his face.

“I love how we greet each other like Powerpuff Girls villains now.”

“This isn’t a thing,” Ryan says flatly. “We’re not having a thing.”

“So what are we having on this fine day in the cosmetics aisle? Wait,” Pete adds before Ryan has a chance to speak, frowning at the glitter pencils in Ryan’s hand. “Those colours are all wrong for you.” Pete takes the liners out of Ryan’s hand without asking and then starts examining the range on the shelf closely. Ryan arches an eyebrow.

“Wrong like putting salt in coffee, or wrong like meeting a teenage fan of yours and dangling a recording contract over their head and taking advantage of them in their shitty rehearsal space?”

“I’m that clichéd, huh?” Pete chuckles as he places the new colours he’s chosen into Ryan’s hand. He closes Ryan’s pale fingers around them with those golden brown, ringed hands and then looks up at Ryan with his dark eyes and smiles. “You came so hard I almost thought your pretty ass was in love, man.” A middle-aged woman an aisle over shoots them an absolutely furious look and Pete flashes her a dazzling grin. “And you’re being very disrespectful to Spencer’s mom’s house right now.”

Ryan huffs.

“I swear to God, I played “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” in front of the mirror _one time_. You’re like the goddamn Candyman except you appear in sweatpants and brag about putting your dick in teenagers in your 20’s.”

Pete smirks and mouths “Ooooh”, casually stretching his fists in the pockets of the sweatpants slung slow on his hips.

“All that pretty and all that _acid_ in one _stupidly_ tight body. Reminds me why my _dick_ was such a fan.”

“Oh baby, when they made me, they broke the mould,” Ryan says sarcastically, fingers pushing his hair out of his eyes. Pete catches his wrist and holds it there, almost touching Ryan’s jaw with those shotgun reflexes. Ryan doesn’t try to pull his hand away, looking at Pete’s face and curling his fingers in his grip, testing how hard Pete’s hold is more out of a vague interest than any immediate want to move.

Pete’s eyes drag lazily around the pink raw skin across Ryan’s fingers and he plays with the protruding bone in his wrist in a way that’s softer than he used to.

“You’ve sucked on that, huh. Looks like you almost had your whole hand in your mouth.” Pete tilts his head, eyes dark and thoughtful and pretty as they flick back to Ryan’s, even bare-faced and with the fine lines under them now. “You were always bad at leaving yourself alone.”

Ryan thinks about that time Pete poured gin from the bottle onto Ryan’s naked knees to wash out the dried blood and grime after he’d pulled Ryan face-first into his crotch on the rough carpet in the bus. Pete’s soft laughter when the sting made Ryan harder.

Ryan twists his wrist, parting his lips and watching Pete’s eyes as he pictures the first time he sucked Pete’s cock, Pete’s warm, dreamy laughter as Ryan’s eyes widened at the untried salty taste. He lets what he’s thinking fill up his face, a little saliva pooling on his tongue, knowing it’s touched his pupils as he feels the subtle shift in Pete’s grip.

“What part of myself was that?”

Pete releases his hand, his wedding ring glinting in the strip lighting of the aisle. He looks like he wants to say something but he looks at the hard set of Ryan’s lips and raises his hands with a small sigh.

“Those would look good on you,” Pete says at last, indicating the eyeliner colours he picked out that are still clasped in Ryan’s hand. Ryan accepts that without looking at them. He remembers Pete sitting him in place on his sofa and standing between his thighs, frowning in concentration as he used his thumb to smudge the black eyeliner around Ryan’s eye, Ryan looking up at him in awe. He remembers Pete’s hand heavy on his lower back, making him arch, Ryan’s thighs shaking as Pete squeezed them closer together with his own, so that his knees almost touched where they pressed down into the bed. Pete always understood what made him look good.

“What, you’re not gonna put it on me?” Ryan mutters, arching a brow one last time and heading towards the counter without waiting for an answer.

“You could always call, Ryan,” Pete calls after him.

“You could always stop staring at my ass,” Ryan calls back flatly, not pausing as he walks away.

“I will not!” Pete calls back cheerfully, and for a moment Ryan flashes back to the way it was when they were all on the same tour. Pete’s casual, arch flirtations with anyone around him, Pete calling him pretty, not hiding the way his eyes went dark as he looked up and down Ryan’s frame, his hand warm and unashamed as he grabbed Ryan’s hip when he passed him backstage, squeezing and rubbing his thumb at the pretty bruise he’d already left on the skin. And Brendon, a deep flush on his face and eyes fluttering away from where Pete’s hand had been when Ryan looked up at him.

Ryan has to ask the cashier to repeat his total, his heart pumping softly in his ears.

The memory of Brendon’s heavy eyelashes and sad eyes trails Ryan as he walks back to his car, drags at him like wearing wet fabric. He almost doesn’t hear Pete catching up to him, the warm smoky smell of Pete’s cologne and the familiar pattern of his accelerated breath only snagging his attention at the last second. Ryan turns and narrowly avoids Pete’s attempt to tap him on the shoulder.

“Are you following me?” Ryan demands.

“I got you this,” Pete says as he reaches into the plastic bag he’s holding and produces a roll-on stick of vanilla deodorant. He holds it out to Ryan and Ryan folds his arms and looks at him.

“Amazing, should I drop to my knees now, or like, in your car?”

“I also got you this.” Pete fishes in the bag again and a tube of burn cream appears wrapped in his palm with the deodorant. Ryan releases a sigh and his arms slacken slightly across his chest.

“What do you want, Pete?”

Pete looks at him for moment and then reaches out for Ryan’s hand, moving it gently as Ryan lets him lift it, extending all the fingers like he’s testing a fractured wing.

“People miss you, Ryan.”

“Because I used to smell like vanilla, or because of the astounding muscular constriction in the lower half of my body?” Ryan snaps, and Pete looks embarrassed, his thumb rubbing absently around Ryan’s wrist.

“It’s possible,” Pete says slowly, “that when you wanted to leave the band, you caught certain people at a time when they were already afraid of more than one person leaving them.”

“Just people,” Ryan says, arching his eyebrows.

“People,” Pete nods, but then he lifts Ryan’s fist to his lips and quickly presses a kiss there. “It was their bad for lashing out. Cutting you out.”

“You know you could’ve posted your touching five-dollar apology deodorant to my house.”

Pete looks Ryan up and down, the skinny jeans, the softly glittering grey eyelids, Brendon’s grey t-shirt, and a soft smirk crackles in his eyes.

“I wasn’t aware you’d have a use for it right now.”

Ryan flushes and leans his weight forward, sliding his wrist through Pete’s loose grip and placing his palm on his chest as he tilts his head down so that his lips drag along the top of Pete’s ear.

“You’re an asshole,” he whispers, allowing a grudging affection in it as he takes the deodorant and the cream from Pete’s other hand, feeling Pete twitch and softly laugh, press into Ryan’s hand on his chest.

Ryan purses his lips and nods at Pete’s offer of coffee at a later date, accepts it without any more resistance. He extends his forearm and lets Pete write his address and various new numbers on the pale underside, not really listening to what Pete’s saying as he watches the fountain pen scratch tiny pink shadows. He pictures Pete reaching across the table and spooning sugar into Ryan’s coffee like he used to, smirking and saying that Ryan’s mouth would taste sweeter.

“You know, he wore that much vanilla deodorant after you left, he smelled like a cake. I wanted to-”

 _“No,”_ Ryan says, looking at Pete with closed-off eyes and thinking about the way he used to swallow that too-sweet coffee while Brendon looked at the table and played with his paper napkin. Pete’s eyelashes lower and he nods and finishes the last digit, a glut of ink dribbling across the skin.

When Ryan rubs the cream onto his fingers that night, he thinks about the sound that Brendon made the first time that he pulled up Ryan’s shirt and found Pete’s teeth marks in the skin. A split second of something between a whimper and cry, and then Brendon sucked on his tongue, forced himself not to make any noise. Forced a sweet, pantomime smile as he looked down at Ryan with his wet eyes. Ryan wants to suck on his fingers, but he looks at them and lets his eyes water. 

*

Ryan answers his phone one Saturday while he’s curled up on his sofa with a shaving mirror balanced on the coffee table and a few lines of blow on a pocket mirror beside it. He’s peering into the mirror and trying to fix his eyeliner, but he’s not used to putting it on anymore and the pencil feels awkward in his fingers as it leaves dark lines around his eyes.

“You should stop what you’re doing,” Spencer tells him.

“What am I doing, Spencer?” Ryan asks, holding the phone between his head and one shoulder as he licks his finger and leans over his bent legs, trying to wipe away a smudge.

“I don’t know, but you carried out your idiot plan to go and see Brendon, so it’s probably something awful.” 

“He told you?”

“No, he was here the other night walking in circles and babbling about everything except you and I took a wild guess.” Spencer’s voice is somehow flat and appalled at the same time.

“Well, that’s fascinating, Spencer, but I’ve done nothing,” Ryan tells him in his best serious voice.

Ryan can almost _feel_ Spencer folding his arms through the phone.

“Alright, you got me. I’m fucking Pete on my sofa and posting Vines of it.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m so funny,” Ryan mutters, inadvertently poking himself in the eye with his eyeliner pencil and cursing.

“Look, just promise me you’ll at least stop doing the worst part of whatever it is you’re doing to yourself.”

Ryan looks over at the coke on the mirror and groans.

Spencer pauses for a long moment and then says, “Thank you.”

“I didn’t agree to that.”

“ _Thank you_ , Ryan,” Spencer says firmly, and then hangs up.

Ryan looks at the blow from the side of his eye for five minutes while he sketches a wonky dove on his face, and then sighs and picks up the mirror. He walks over to the trash and drops it in. Everything feels still for a moment as he looks at the white powder all over the bottom of the trash liner. Something awkward inside Ryan’s stomach makes him wrap his arms around his shoulders and look away. It’s been a long time since he’s felt _looked after_.

*

“What the fuck, Ross?” Brendon hisses when he opens the door and sees Ryan standing there in his rose vest, tossing his fringe out of his eyes. He looks livid but he pulls Ryan inside and slams the door behind them.

“I thought you might like it, _Urie_ ,” Ryan says, running his hand across his rose-adorned chest and then down his stomach over the fabric. Brendon is looking at him like he’s so angry he isn’t able to speak, and Ryan tilts his head back, lowering his lashes and swallowing. “You always liked the vest.”

“ _What_ ,” Brendon says, almost shaking with anger, “are you doing at my house dressed like that? I don’t want you around and I don’t want anyone to see you around looking like that. At least nobody cares about you anymore so I know you’ve haven’t taken fan photos or some shit.”

It smarts more than Ryan thought it would, but there’s a telltale blush on Brendon’s face as he tries to drag his eyes away from Ryan’s body.

“But you care,” he says. Brendon’s colour deepens but he ignores him.

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you? To expose my…I don’t even know: what is it you want exposed, Ryan? That I like guys? That I was your one-time pity fuck? That I had the gall to try to be happy when I still wanted you? I’m sorry that I ever did that stupid interview, by the way, because apparently you’ve still got the ability to make me feel like absolute shit for no reason, so if that’s what you wanted me to say you can leave now.”

That startles a laugh out of Ryan.

“You think I pitied you?”

“Do you know how much of an asshole you are?” Brendon snaps. “Do you fucking know?”

“I’ve been advised,” Ryan says dryly. He adjusts one of the roses on his shoulder. “I thought I looked good.”

“Yeah, you look pretty Ryan, fucking good for you.”

Ryan fingers the silver chains hanging over his stomach.

“You used to like it.”

“I don’t anymore.”

“Liar.” Ryan hooks his thumbs inside his jeans, tugging and watching Brendon’s dark eyes fly to his hips as the fabric lifts away.

“Think what you want.”

“Oh wow, anything I want?”

Brendon gives him a look that’s full of lust and loathing and turns away.

“Do you remember,” Ryan says slowly, “that time I wore this when we posed for that photo, and you put your hand on my ass?”

“You snapped at me to get my hands away from you after that shoot,” Brendon snarls, turning back to face him.

“I made it up to you,” Ryan says, lowering his lashes and feeling his cheeks grow pink as he remembers his mouth wrapped around Brendon’s cock, his hands in a neat fist behind his back, Brendon pulsing and spilling in his neck.

“That’s your idea of making _anything_ up to me? God, you’re a fucking _triumph_ of a human being. Your parents must be so proud.”

Ryan bites his lip as Brendon realises what he’s just said and flushes, managing not to say anything and feeling awful for wanting Brendon guilty about it tonight.

“I’m sorry I said that,” Brendon says, his stiff shoulders collapsing a little. “But you’re still an asshole.”

“I always was,” Ryan tells him. “You must like that.”

“I must like that,” Brendon repeats and laughs. He reaches out to touch a rose on Ryan’s chest and Ryan stares at him.

“Yeah,” Ryan breathes. Brendon steps forward and Ryan steps back, pressing against the wall. 

“I always wanted to be like you, you know?” Brendon strokes his fingers along Ryan’s face. “Smart, good with words, never put up with any shit. I looked up to you when I met you. And you used me like a rung on your fucking ladder.”

Ryan leans back with one shoulder against the door frame, angling his hips up and arching his spine.

“That’s dramatic.”

“Do you even feel bad, like at all? It’s patently obvious you don’t give a fuck about me, but for anyone else, ever? What about Keltie?”

“What about her?” Ryan digs his thumbs deeper into his pelvic muscle, holding himself still so he doesn’t squirm from the awkward sensation of hearing Brendon say her name. Expressing remorse isn’t Ryan’s strong point. “Did you wanna date me, Brendon? Did you wanna wear a short skirt and jump out of a box at my birthday party?”

Ryan feels a flush of triumph as Brendon shoves him into the wall. Brendon loosens his grip and lets out a bitter laugh that makes something inside Ryan ache.

“You never changed, huh? You still like provoking people until they push you away.”

“You pushed me against a wall.”

“I pushed you as far as you wanted me to! You and your fucking fragile romantic hero image you drag around with your _fucking_ roses! What kind of tired-ass garbage is that when all you want to do is dangle affection in front of people and sneer at them when they reach for it? Must be sweet to be all precious and wise about how everyone abandons you when your most affectionate states are ‘lukewarm tolerance’ and ‘glazed whore’. God I’m so done paying for it, Ryan.”

“I guess I’ll settle for you fucking me up the ass on the house then,” Ryan snaps, flushing and humiliated. “Not that I don’t love all this spleen.”

Brendon laughs, flushed and angry and licking his lips.

“And what makes you think I’m gonna do that?”

“The fact that you fucking _want_ to?” Brendon wraps one hand around Ryan’s hip, and Ryan arches into his fingers.

“Sometimes I want to lock myself up in my house and avoid the people who care about me and get nice and liquored up, like some other people I know, but I don’t do that either, because it would be fucking stupid.”

The dig about the alcohol pushes hard against something inside Ryan and snaps it, and he doesn’t want to play this game anymore.

“God, you think you’re so much better than me. Don’t act like you didn’t crawl into your bed that night I came over and come in your hand thinking about my _ass_ , the same way I did thinking about you. And you don’t ‘know’ me anymore. For all that you understood anything about me in the first place.”

Brendon’s lips crush into his, full and sweet and sticky with wine and desperation and Ryan is seventeen again, lust fierce and scared in his throat, bleeding into Brendon, everything that they dreamed and planned for their lives as sensitive and convulsive as their limbs between them.

“I understand this,” Brendon breathes into his lips, like he’s trying to prove it. “I understand nobody-” Brendon stutters and Ryan’s knees get weak. He tries to follow Brendon’s lips and Brendon pulls back an inch, not far away enough that he isn’t panting into Ryan’s lips, his eyelashes sweeping in that damp butterfly sensation against Ryan’s face. “Nobody fucks you like I do. Is that why you’re pawing through magazines? Wanna find me talking about what I like so you can think about how it used to be sucking on your fingers while I fucked you?” Brendon presses Ryan’s wrists into the wall and his thigh up into Ryan’s crotch and kisses him again, hard and fast. Ryan arches as he pulls away, feels anchored to Brendon by the flush of heat in his stomach as Brendon’s abdomen presses into his. “How many girls did you go through like-,” Brendon makes a tiny _‘uuhh’_ sound and sucks on his lip as Ryan presses the line of his cock down into the tensed muscle of Brendon’s thigh, “Like fucking candy before you came crawling back here dressed up like a pretty little doll so that you could really get fucking _fed_ , Ryan?”

Ryan surges forward and Brendon lets him this time, whining into him as Ryan’s lips fix wet and messy around the flesh of Brendon’s bottom lip.

“So you could get full,” Brendon is saying, but his voice fills up for a moment with the same soft flush as his face, “Full like I am with-” Brendon swallows wet in his throat and Ryan curses softly in his grip, wants to touch him all over until his skin chafes. “I understand,” Brendon tries again, but he sounds like he’s asking and Ryan’s chest aches. “I understand this.”

“Yeah,” Ryan answers, almost a gasp, lowering his eyelashes and arching his back like a marionette. “Yeah.”

As soon as Brendon releases his wrists Ryan kisses him and wraps his arms around his back, scrabbles at his shoulder blades and then shoves his hands up under the back of Brendon’s shirt, dragging his nails down the twin arcs of bone and across his lower back. Brendon makes an almost choking sound into his mouth and kisses Ryan harder, palming at the roses on his chest and his stomach and shoving his hand under the black fabric of Ryan’s jeans. Ryan staggers back into the wall and hits his head as Brendon wraps his hand around his cock and squeezes, and Brendon groans and pushes against him, sucking hard on his collar bone.

“You’re so hard,” Brendon says as he drags Ryan’s zipper down and starts stroking him, wrapping him in his underwear and his fist.

“You’re grinding on me and playing with my cock,” Ryan points out, trying not to sound as fascinated as he is as he presses his palms into Brendon’s abs under his t-shirt. They’re harder than they were the last time that Ryan touched him, almost flat muscle twitching and damp under his probing fingers.

“As if you weren’t hard as soon as you got here.” Brendon pulls off his shirt and Ryan stares at Brendon’s bare skin, flushes as he feels himself leaking.

“Only after you called me a whore,” he deadpans, and Brendon laughs, low in his throat with this pretty, shivery lilt as he fumbles with Ryan’s vest.

“I want-” Brendon says, fingers hovering shakily over a rose as it starts to fall off Ryan’s shoulder.

“Anything you want,” Ryan says, and wants to swallow his tongue.

Brendon laughs again, a sound full of fake sweetness as his fingers pull apart the buttons of Ryan’s cream shirt and play with Ryan’s ribcage, tapping and stroking and then pinching as he stoops to suck on a nipple.

“ _Anything I want_ ,” Brendon repeats, wrapping his fingers around Ryan’s forearm. “You’re such a goddamn liar.”

Brendon yanks Ryan’s arm, hard. It pulls Ryan away from the wall and in front of Brendon, who’s twisting him, bending Ryan’s arm up behind his back and grabbing Ryan’s waist with other hand, squeezing the scrap of soft skin under his last rib as he pushes him towards the sofa.   
  
“You want it like this, don’t you?” Brendon asks, releasing Ryan’s waist and pushing his face against the top of the couch. Ryan’s shaking and burying his face in the fabric, cock pulsing at the pain in his twisted arm. “You want it like whatever the fuck you’ve done to your fingers and your arm this time.” Brendon pulls Ryan’s arm up so that Ryan’s fingers flex pink and useless between his shoulder blades. Ryan whines at the pulsing pain in his shoulder, wondering what it looks like, wondering when Brendon noticed the little pink scratches on his arm.  
  
“Did you like letting some girl scratch you up before you came looking for this?” Brendon asks, and Ryan laughs at that, thinking about Pete carrying a fountain pen around in his stupid sweatpants. Brendon pulls Ryan’s jeans and his underwear down his thighs and pushes him forward and Ryan feels a flush crawling up the back of his neck, listening to the sound of Brendon undoing his belt.

“You weren’t wrong,” Brendon tells him, and Ryan jerks from the pure shock of Brendon’s skin on his like this for the first time in years as Brendon presses himself into his back and sucks the sensitive spot under his ear. “I did think about fucking you that night after you dropped by to fuck me up. I licked my palms until they were nice and wet and then I played with myself with both hands thinking about what I’d like to do with you.” Ryan shudders as Brendon’s fingers trail down his waist and over his hipbone, drawing a circle there and then trailing to Ryan’s tailbone. “I pretended that I could’ve gone back to the times when you used to fall asleep hugging your stupid notebooks to your chest.” Brendon’s fingers softly trace down the seam of Ryan’s balls and up again, stroking his perineum.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ryan spits, hips squirming and the head of his cock pushing into the fabric of Brendon’s sofa.

“I thought about climbing into your bunk with you and pulling your jeans down and opening you up with my fingers so quietly you’d still be clutching your notebook and doing that little sigh you do in your sleep. And then I’d slide myself into you and suck on your neck and you would wake up and feel how hard you made me and how deep I was inside you,” Brendon rubs one thumb along Ryan’s pinned forearm, one around the rim of his ass. “And you’d say my name, like you did on the lawn at that fucking birthday party, and you’d come.”

“Uhh,” Ryan flushes at the wet, groaning sound he makes, unable to close his mouth and feeling drool start to wet his lip as he thinks about Brendon that night on the wet lawn, his lips shining with spit and his eyes shining from the fairy lights draped on the washing line and Ryan’s fingers inside his lavender hoodie, intrigued, learning him.

“I came thinking about how you’d wrap your arm back around my neck and ask me to keep fucking you until it made you hard again. And then I thought,” Brendon continues, “what a stupid fucking fantasy. Because you never liked any of that shit. You pretended to sometimes, if you snapped your fingers and I hesitated. But all you wanted was someone to make you nice and sore at night.” Brendon straightens and releases Ryan’s pinned arm with a sudden pull and Ryan hisses at the pain as his circulation rushes to the numbing limb. “What you want,” Brendon says, “is something to shove so hard inside you that you get cramps in that fucking hole in your ribcage where your heart is meant to be.” Brendon’s voice cracks at the last moment, melodic and lovely even when he’s rasping, the way it used to be, the way it is now. Ryan gnaws his lip and screws his eyes shut so that the tears forming in his glands dampen his lashes, hopes that if Brendon turns him around he looks pretty.

“Spread your legs further apart.”

Ryan pushes his thighs as far apart as he can with his black jeans lashing his knees together.

“Please.”

He hears the stutter of Brendon’s breath and then Brendon steps back and Ryan panics and his arm flails back blindly and catches Brendon’s wrist.

“ _Brendon_. Please don’t leave.”

“I don’t have anything to get you wet with in here,” Brendon snaps, but his voice is starting to get thin and shivery with want and Ryan wants him now.

“Spit on your cock,” Ryan flushes at the words but he reaches with one hand and pulls softly at his ass until Brendon sucks in a breath. “Or put your fingers in my mouth. I’ll take it, just please don’t leave me alone.”

Brendon’s wrist goes limp in Ryan’s fingers and Brendon’s breath mirrors the heaving of Ryan’s chest, pressed against the sofa in Brendon’s big empty house.

“Fuck you,” Brendon whispers, shudders, presses hard against the backs of Ryan’s thighs as his voice grows louder. “ _God_ , fuck you, Ryan.” Ryan hears the wet sounds of Brendon licking his palms, pictures him parting his lips and pushing his tongue out, letting drool drip onto his fingers like he used to with that focused look in his eyes, when they didn’t have anything. _“I can’t believe you just let me_ ,” Brendon would tell him, throaty and awed as he pressed up into Ryan and Ryan mewled from the friction. _“Oh fuck it- it feels so fucking raw, Ryan. Fuck, it’s perfect.”_ Those sick flowers bloom in Ryan’s stomach again, stubbornly lush and alive, curling at the memory of Brendon making him feel aching and new.

Brendon’s knuckles rub along Ryan’s thighs as he strokes himself with his saliva-coated fists, and then Brendon’s leaning down and Ryan’s flushing at the hot breath on his exposed ass for a heartbeat and the spit that runs from Brendon’s tongue onto his skin. Brendon pushes the wetness just inside with his fingers and then pulls up and presses the head of his cock into the tiny bit of give, rubbing, wrapping his fingers around Ryan’s hip.

“What are you gonna pretend this time, while I fuck you?” Brendon’s voice is drenched with hurt and desire and Ryan feels like someone turned his nerve-endings on like that lame string of fairy lights at the house party, jerking and changing colours under his skin. “That I’m Pete? That you don’t fucking fantasise about messing with my head more than anything else about me, that-”

“That you’re holding me down on stage and kissing me and fucking me and the fans are screaming your name and it’s making me come.”

Brendon guides himself inside, doesn’t pause as he slowly thrusts in all the way, and Ryan laughs, because he _does_ get cramps in his ribcage, shooting up from the pain in his guts. He’s put three fingers in his ass about five times in the last week, twisted on them this morning as he watched his flushed, anxious face in the mirror, but this isn’t like that, too much as Brendon pulses inside him and presses the tips of his fingers into the nape of Ryan’s neck and gasps.

“I hate you,” Brendon murmurs, pushes his fingers into Ryan’s hair and softly pulls, his other hand skittering up Ryan’s ribs like he isn’t sure where to put it.

 _“Please,”_ Ryan moans, and Brendon moans too.

_“Ryan.”_

Brendon adjusts Ryan’s stance so that he has to go up on his toes, the sofa taking most of his weight where he’s panting against it, the fabric getting wet under his lips.

“What’s it like?” Brendon breathes as he pushes in and out of him, the angle perfect and his fingers pulling Ryan’s hair until Ryan’s breath comes out in little huffs and he arches his head back. “Taking me out of the plastic again?” He grunts and circles his hips, cock nudging into Ryan’s prostate until Ryan almost blacks out. “God, you’re so fucking tight.” Brendon sounds like he’s almost wincing and Ryan pushes his hard-on into the frame of the sofa, wants to _squeeze._

“What’s it like putting it in my stomach again?” Ryan asks, groaning as Brendon’s skin starts to slap into his.

“I hate it,” Brendon says, and leans down and licks all the way up Ryan’s throat, dirty and oozing with lust that he isn’t trying to hide anymore. Ryan curses as Brendon’s arm wraps around his waist and pulls him up against his chest, bouncing Ryan up and down on his cock.

“Fuck, Brendon, please, please.” The words are rushing out of Ryan while Brendon’s chewing at his neck and feeling him up, thumb rubbing at his nipple, at the leaking head of his cock, at his belly where Brendon’s pumping under the skin.

“Jerk yourself off,” Brendon gasps, “Please, want you all shaking and tight, want you to _make_ me.”

Ryan’s damp fingers loosely grip his cock, a sugary pain running into his wrist from the place where Brendon twisted his arm, and he turns his head blindly into Brendon’s face. Brendon’s full lips slide on Ryan’s cheek in a shuddery inhale and Ryan comes, warm and disgusting and amazing. Brendon’s fingers push up into the cum on Ryan’s chest and he’s sucking at the corner of Ryan’s lips as Ryan squirms.

Ryan tries to pull in with his lungs, to give himself an adequate amount of air as he shivers around Brendon’s cock, and then Brendon’s fantasy plays in his head and he gives up, wraps an awkward arm back around Brendon’s neck.

“Until it makes me hard again, please,” he stutters out, finds Brendon’s lips with his, and Brendon’s fingers dig into his ribs as he whines and comes inside him.

Brendon sucks softly on his lip as the pulses of his cock get slower where it’s still stuck all the way inside Ryan. There’s a thick layer of moisture on his lips, and Ryan wonders if part of it is from yelling, the way they used to get wet from singing all night. Ryan’s brain is flickering slowly like a switchboard, a few lights coming back on as Brendon softens inside him. Brendon pulls out suddenly and Ryan cringes at the change of pressure and the cum that leaks onto his inner thigh.

Ryan looks at his fingers, long and pale as he pulls his jeans up, presses the button into his pelvic bone a little, thinks about Brendon pushing him down. He wonders why Brendon isn’t touching him, breathes through his nose, touches his ribs as they move up and down, wants to make sure all the pieces are working as he turns around and tilts up his head.

Brendon is on his back on the floor. He’s pulled his jeans half-heartedly back up around his hips, the black fabric and pubic hair startlingly dark against the streaks of flushed colour across his torso.

“Please go,” Brendon says, lying with his arm over his face. “Please just go.”

Ryan’s laugh is dry and weak as he picks up the crumpled rose vest from the carpet.

“You’re kicking me out?”

“I’m not making you do anything,” Brendon retorts. “You say that I don’t understand anything about you but here’s what I understand, Ryan: you got what you wanted and now you want to leave.” A tear trails from under Brendon’s arm and down his jaw. “Please just do that _now_.”

Ryan flees.  
  
  


*

Ryan’s phone rings the second he gets inside his house.

“You piece of shit, Ryan,” Spencer says.

Ryan hangs up.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Sugarhill Park @ Tumblr](https://sugarhillpark.tumblr.com/)


End file.
